Alberto Blanco, born in Mexico City in 1951, is considered one of Mexico's most important poets. He studied chemistry at the Universidad Iberoamerica and philosophy at the UNAM. He also pursued a Master’s Degree in Asian Studies, specializing in China.
Blanco was first published in a journal in 1970. He was co-editor and designer of the poetry journal El Zaguan (1975-1977). Blanco’s literary output has been very abundant and varied, and he has undertaken three genres: first, poetry, followed by essays, and, finally, translations. He has published twenty-six books of poetry in Mexico and additional books in other countries; ten books of his translations of the work of other poets; and twelve story books for children, some of which have been illustrated by his wife Patricia Revah. His work has been translated into a dozen languages: English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Japanese, Romanian, Bulgarian, and Russian.
Blanco’s most recent book of poetry is entitled: Música de cámara instantánea (Music of the Instant Camera or Instant Chamber Music) (2005) and consists of fifty-two poems dedicated to the same number of composers of contemporary music. (Note: this is not his most recent anthology.)
There are four anthologies of his poems: Amanecer de los Sentidos, published by the National Council for Culture and the Arts in Mexico in 1993; Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual anthology that included a dozen translators, published by City Lights in San Francisco, in 1995; De vierkantswrotel can de hemel, Gedichten, translated into Dutch by Bart Vonck and published by Wagner and Van Santen in Holland, 2002; and A Cage of Transparent Words, edited by Paul B. Roth, translated by eight translators, and published by The Bitter Oleander Press of New York.
In 1998, El Corazon del Instante (The Heart of the Moment), a compilation of twelve volumes of poetry that included twenty-five years (1968-1993) of work was published in a series of major Mexican works; and in 2005 a second compilation of another twelve books of poetry entitled La Hora y la Neblina (The Hour and the Mist) was published in the same series by the same publisher (Fondo de la Cultura Economica).
Blanco has been involved in many poetry festivals around the world and has taught many courses, workshops, readings, and lectures in more than twenty universities in the United States as well as in France, Canada, Germany, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Ireland, El Salvador, Chile, Belgium, and Sweden.
To date, he has published more than fifty books, along with twenty more of translations, anthologies, or illustrations as well as seven hundred publications in magazines, catalogues, newspapers, and literary supplements. More than 150 essays, reviews, and commentaries on his work have been published both in Mexico and other countries; more than fifty interviews with him have appeared. His poems are included in seventy anthologies, have been studied in various master’s and doctoral theses, and have been included in a dozen dictionaries and textbooks. His total publications exceed twelve hundred.
He was a grant recipient of the Centro Mexicano de Escritores (Mexican Center of Writers, 1977), the National Institute of Fine Arts, 1980, and the Fondo Nacional
para la Cultura y las Artes (National Fund for Culture and Arts, 1990). In 1988 he received th Carlos Pellicer Poetry Prize for his book Cromos, and in 1989 the Jose Fuentes Mares Prize for Song to the Shadow of the Animals, a book that unites his poems with drawings by Francisco Toledo.
In 1991 he received a grant from the Fulbright Program as a poet-in-residence at the University of California, Irvine and, in 1992, he was awarded a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.
In 1996 Insects Also Are Perfect received honors from IBBY in Holland. He was admitted into the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (National System
of Creative Artists) in 1994, for which he has also been a juror.
In 1997 he accepted a residency in Bellagio, Italy funded by the Rockefeller Foudation; and in 2000 he was invited as a resident poet at the Poetry Center of the University of Arizona. He was also invited to inaugurate the program, “La Universidad de la Poesía" ("The University of Poetry”), in Chile, where he gave readings, lectures, and workshops in various cities in that country. In 2001 he received the Octavio Paz Grant for Poetry, and in 2008, he was awarded a grant from the Guggenheim Foundation. In 2002 he received the “Alfonso X (the Wise)” award for excellence in literary translation from San Diego State University in California.
Although he has dedicated himself chiefly to the writing of poetry and has not embarked on an academic career (in Mexico he has never taught at any institution), he was a full-time professor for three years (1993-1996) in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Texas at El Paso. At the end of 1996, he returned with his family to Mexico City, but in 1998 and 1999, he was invited as a distinguished professor to San Diego State University in California. In 2007 he was awarded an endowed chair, the Knapp Chair, for a semester at the University of San Diego. In 2009, Blanco taught courses in art at Middlebury College, and he was invited to teach literature courses at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in 2009 and 2010.
Blanco has collaborated with numerous painters, sculptors and photographers, and his essays on the visual arts are published in many catalogs and magazines. In 1998 they were collected in one volume: Las voces del ver (The Voices of Vision). This book served as a basis for a television series of programs with the same name which were shown on Mexican television. A new edition, revised and augmented of his essays on visual arts, will be published in 2008, entitled El eco de las formas (The Echo of Forms).Poetry Books Published in Mexico
Giros de faros, Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura
Económica, Mexico, 1979. (Second Edition, Fondo de Cultura Económica,
Mexico, 1985.)
El largo camino hacia ti, Cuadernos de Poesía, UNAM, Mexico, 1980.
Antes de nacer, Libros del Salmón, Editorial Penélope, Mexico, 1983.
Tras el rayo, Cuarto Menguante Editores, Guadalajara, 1985.
Cromos, Colección Tezontle, Fondo de Cultura Económica, INBA and SEP, Mexico, 1987.
Canto a la sombra de los animales, in collaboration with the Mexican artist Toledo, Galería López Quiroga, Mexico, 1988.
El libro de los pájaros, Ediciones Toledo, Mexico, 1990.
Materia prima, El Ala del Tigre, UNAM, Mexico, 1992.
Cuenta de los guías, Ediciones Era, Mexico, 1992.
Amanecer de los sentidos, a personal anthology, with an introduction by Alvaro Mutis, Lecturas Mexicanas, Third Series, Num. 79, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 1993.
El corazón del instante, a collection of twelve poetry books, Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 1998.
Este silencio, a book of 68 haikus and 4 tankas, illustrated by Xavier Sagarra, Editorial Verdehalago, México, 1998.
Más de este silencio, a book of 40 haikus, illustrated by Susana Sierra, Ediciones del Ermitaño, México, 2001.
El libro de las piedras, Práctica Mortal, Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, Mexico, 2003.
Medio cielo, with illustrations by Felipe Morales, Artes de México and Librería Grañén Porrúa, Mexico, 2004.
La hora y la neblina, second collection of twelve books of poetry: Colección Letras Mexicanas, Fondo de Cultura Económica, Mexico, 2005.
Música de cámara instantánea, 52 poems dedicated to contemporary music composers, Cuadernos de Pauta, CONACULTA, Mexico, 2005.
Poetry Books Published in the United States and Other Countries
Dawn of the Senses, a bilingual poetry anthology including poems from nine books of poetry and some new poems, edited by Juvenal Acosta, and translated by many contemporary poets (City Lights, 1995)
El origen y la huella/The Origin and the Trace, images by Alberto Dilger, translation by Julian Palley, (Circa, 2000)
De vierkantswortel van de hemel, Gedichten, translation by Bart Vonck (Wagner & Van Santen, Holland, 2002)
Pequeñas historias de misterio, illustrated by Luis Mayo, (Galería Estampa, Madrid, 2002)
A la lumière de la nuit / A la luz de la noche, illustrated with collages translated into French by Danièle Bonnefois, (Manière Noire Editeur, Vernon, France, 2005)
A Cage of Transparent Words, a selection of poems by Alberto Blanco, a bilingual anthology with poems from nine of his books, edited by Paul B. Roth and translated into English by Judith Infante, Joan Lindgren, Elise Miller, Edgardo Moctezuma, Gustavo V. Segade, Anthony Seidman, John Oliver Simon and Kathleen Snodgrass, The Bitter Oleander Press, New York, 2007.
Feu nouveau / Fuego Nuevo, a bilingual poetry anthology, translation by Stéphane Chaumet, L'Oreille du Loup, Paris, 2009.
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